{"id":6071,"date":"2015-04-27T09:57:46","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T08:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/?p=6071"},"modified":"2015-04-27T09:57:46","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T08:57:46","slug":"physics-as-necessary-but-not-sufficient-to-explain-causation-in-complex-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/2015\/04\/27\/physics-as-necessary-but-not-sufficient-to-explain-causation-in-complex-systems\/","title":{"rendered":"physics as necessary but not sufficient to explain causation in complex systems"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ellis (2008) has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mth.uct.ac.za\/~ellis\/Top-down%20Ellis.pdf\">an account of the nature of top-down causation in complex systems<\/a>. He says there are at least five established forms of top-down causation &#8211; ways in which the higher level properties of a system can have causal power over the lower level elements (in contrast to the reductive view which would say that all behaviour of a system can be explained by the lower level properties : the physics is primary approach).<\/p>\n<p>For me, the value of the paper is a single thought: <i>physics provides the necessary, but not sufficient conditions, for explaining human behaviour<\/i>. Without our physical natures &#8211; our undeniable existence as material beings, governed by four primary physical forces &#8211; we would not be, but to understand our being you need more than an account of the component materials and their governing forces.<\/p>\n<p>Probably an obvious point, but succinctly put and useful to have on hand when faced with reductionists, or when trying to figure out the proper role of human agency in a strictly physical universe.<\/p>\n<p>Ellis, G. F. (2008). <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mth.uct.ac.za\/~ellis\/Top-down%20Ellis.pdf\">On the nature of causation in complex systems<\/a>. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 63(1), 69-84.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ellis (2008) has an account of the nature of top-down causation in complex systems. He says there are at least five established forms of top-down causation &#8211; ways in which the higher level properties of a system can have causal power over the lower level elements (in contrast to the reductive view which would say [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectual-self-defence"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5KQtW-1zV","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6071"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6072,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6071\/revisions\/6072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}